Blackberries!

We are semi-settled into our new home and just loving it!  There is still a ton of painting and hardwood floor laying to do, but besides that we're doing pretty good...thanks to lots of unpacking help from Jessica, Ashley, and my dad!  Our new house seems huge (even though it's really not that much bigger square footage wise)!  Having a third bedroom is awesome, and having a master bedroom you can actually walk in is also awesome!  Our shower is just glorious.  Oh yes, and having our own bathroom is fabulous too!  I could go on and on really, but that's enough about the inside.  Let me tell you about outside.  

Today during nap time, Lydia and I took a bucket and some cups out to our creek and caught five little fish.  Lydia was so excited!  We have also seen several deer, including a young buck.  I just saw a big deer drinking from our creek when I went to release our fishy friends.  So cool!  Oh, and we also have a rabbit named Cottontail that hops by quite regularly.  We left out a bowl of carrots for him last night, but they were still there this morning.  There have been even more creature spottings, but I'll move on yet again...

to blackberries!

We have tons of blackberry bushes all along the edge of our backyard/back hill.  So far we had just had a few to snack on every time we checked, but we went up this evening and there were a ton of ripe blackberries!  We filled two big cups and there are still plenty more for tomorrow!

The girls ate soooo many blackberries! Yum!

These things blow our old mulberries out of the water! :)

Anna Kate would have stayed out there all night eating them, but I finally had to drag the girls inside...

for bath time!

The girls had so much fun playing together in the tub tonight.  I'm hoping that's a sign of good things to come!

So there ya have it, a little update on our lives.  Lydia recently said, "Aren't you so glad we finally moved to the triangle house? We should have done this a long time ago!" 

I sure did love our six years in our old house, but I'm thinking I'm going to love our time here just as much! :)

Our New Home!

It finally happened!  We sold our beloved first home on Friday, and yesterday we bought our new home!  (Not sure why there's a pair of pants laying on the ground.)

To celebrate, I decorated our new mailbox.  Maybe just a tad over the top, but the stickers will probably just wash off in the rain anyways.  So this is my trial run.  

Would you all like to come in and take a look around?  Yes?  Right this way!

This is a picture of our living room, looking towards the front door.  The other door you see is Lydia's bedroom, and the opening on the right leads to the kitchen.  Joel is, as I type, preparing the floors so that he and Chris can start laying hardwoods in the morning.  He ripped up the carpet yesterday.  We are going to paint these walls a light blueish color...hopefully we chose wisely, but who knows!

And here we have our master suite, which is pretty sweet!  Joel already painted it a very light grey.

I'm pretty sure it is twice as big as our current bedroom, which means we may actually have some floor to walk on! :)

And two whole closets!  Can you believe it?!  And our very own bathroom, which is also probably twice as big as our current bathroom.  What will we do with all this space?! :)  Here's a funny side story for ya, when Joel and I were moving into our current house, I said, "which side of the closet would you like?"  He said, completely serious, "I get half the closet???  I just assumed you'd get the whole thing." Ha!

Here's our bathroom.

And what you can't see is a nice big closet across from the sinks, twice as big as our current linen closet.  Everything just seems to be doubling doesn't it!

If you head down a little hall, you'll get to Anna Kate's room, which has now been freshly painted.  I'm not sure how I'm going to decorate yet, haven't found the perfect fabric, so we just painted it a very light off whiteish color...and by we I mean Joel.  :) (By the way, I just stole these pictures off the real estate page.)

She has her very own closet too!

Here's the little hall I mentioned, coming out of Anna's room, looking towards our bedroom.  Closet on the left and the girls' bathroom on the right.

We've primed this bathroom, and again, we means Joel.  It's going to be the same color as Anna's room.

This is Lydia's bedroom.  Oh and one of the best features of this house is the HUGE front yard, which she has a great view of out that closed window.

You can see another small hall closet here, which will be the game closet for now.

And here's the kitchen!

Joel's going to put hardwood floors in here too, get new countertops, and he's going to build us an island too!  So much to do! :) (He said he was ready for some new projects, and he sure got em!) That door on the left leads to the garage.  Isn't that fancy! :)

This is the little dining nook, and Joel is going to open up this doorway so it's a little more open between the kitchen and living room.  He might even be doing that right now!  Oh, and to the right is my closet of a laundry room.  All ya need, right?  (I hope!)

And if you'll follow me out the French doors, you will see our new back porch that I love!

Lots of good times waiting to happen here!

Only thing missing is our front yard, which I have no picture of.  We even have our own little creek with craw dads, salamanders, frogs, tiny fish...it's gonna be fun!  You'll just have to come see it to believe it!  I can't wait to show you before and after pictures!  But you'll probably have to wait a while for those!  Only a few more days left here in our little cozy cottage, but we are all very excited to get settled into our new home!  And then head to the beach!  The adventures never end! :)

Spilled Milk!

Meet Anna Kate!

This is what happens when I try to cook dinner.  I wonder why it could possibly be so quiet and come out of the kitchen to find this.

Might be time to upgrade her to a firmer sippy cup.  She pushes the nipple down onto the table to make milk come out.  What a mess!  Oh, and I can't keep her off that table!  I've just about given up!

So if you're wondering why my house isn't always spotless...she is the main culprit!

She will definitely add some fun to moving, don't ya think? :)

New House!

Well, here she is, our new house!  Joel has all sorts of ideas and plans to make her beautiful...I may never see him again.  Lydia and I call this house the triangle house, for obvious reasons.

We have been trying to decide on hardwood flooring and paint colors.  Last night we got five different paint samples to try to decide on two colors, and none of them were quite right.  Ha! 

 I can't remember what Joel was doing in this picture that required safety glasses, but Lydia decided to put hers on to match him.  :)

So the adventure continues.  We have ten days until we sign the papers (hopefully) and three weeks left in this house.  

Easter Finale!

Ok let's wrap these Easter pictures up already! 

We had lots of egg hunts!

After Anna Kate's nap, we headed to Chattanooga for a Habermas Easter dinner.

The girls loved their baskets!

It was a wonderful Easter!

Happy June!

Well, it's June 1st, which means I have exactly one month left to blog to you all from The Cozy Cottage.  We found out today that our closing date (if all goes as planned) will be June 17th, which then gives us two weeks of complete craziness to get ourselves moved to our new home by July 1st.  Should be fun!  Right now we're trying to pick out the perfect paint colors and hardwood flooring.  It's all so exciting (and just a wee bit stressful)!  So hold on to your hat, June, here we come!!!